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PHP 8: Before and After

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Re: PHP 8: Before and After

#191

Post by slightwinder »

TheHemric wrote: post #112

I don't really understand why in 2020 there's still this kind of blind hatred against this language. It often comes from horrible bad memories from previous versions or old frameworks. Objectively, compared to other languages i've been working with it is more than OK. Despite it's lack of "style" it is easy to understand, host, tests, diagnose and it is powerfull for web applications. I've been working on a SaaS API…

> I don't really understand why in 2020 there's still this kind of blind hatred against this language.

Well, the language is burned for a whole generation of devs, and it's hard to lose the nasty stench once it has settled. A major reason might be that you don't touch again what you learned to dislike. Because you known anyway that it will be painful, why go for it?

> It often comes from horrible bad memories from previous versions or old frameworks.

Those old versions and frameworks are still around. Companies don't lose their legacy fast.

> Objectively, compared to other languages i've been working with it is more than OK. Despite it's lack of "style" it is easy to understand, host, tests, diagnose and it is powerfull for web applications.

That always was the case with PHP. Doesn't say whether it has lost it's old flaws.

> It's essentially sinking in popularity because of bad faith and lack of hype, really sad !

Is more losing because of competition. PHP still is mainly a web-stack backend-language that can't offer much in other areas. But now there are other languages who can equally shine on backend, while also shine on other areas. So obvisouly people go for the language which can give them more, instead of less.

Re: PHP 8: Before and After

#193

Post by oweiler »

TheHemric wrote: post #112

I don't really understand why in 2020 there's still this kind of blind hatred against this language. It often comes from horrible bad memories from previous versions or old frameworks. Objectively, compared to other languages i've been working with it is more than OK. Despite it's lack of "style" it is easy to understand, host, tests, diagnose and it is powerfull for web applications. I've been working on a SaaS API…

> It often comes from horrible bad memories from previous versions or old frameworks. Not only that. There is a huge amount of devs hating PHP w/o ever having worked with it. Same with Perl.

Re: PHP 8: Before and After

#194

Post by swiley »

SergeAx wrote: post #179

Please remember that PHP is more or less the only truly free (as freedom) community driven language suitable for both prototyping/pet projects and enterprise grade web software development. TypeScript and C# are Microsoft, Go is Google, Java is Oracle. Python is not suitable for complex multi-layered systems, Rust is too young and let's see where it will go without Mozilla. Ruby? IMO Ruby is in sunset phase, no new a…

Go isn't free? JS isn't free? Guile (which is probably as free as you can get) comes with a web framework too.

Also what does "enterprise grade" mean? I'm not sure if you're aware but the forum we're talking on right now is written in PG's lisp dialect. I'm pretty sure arc is free.

Re: PHP 8: Before and After

#195

Post by jhgb »

megous wrote: post #188
jhgb wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Its variables start with $ and that is ugly: At the very least it seems nonsensical and cargo-cultish: As a non PHP-er, what is the actual purpose of $? In Perl, it indicates variable context (for better or worse, there's more than one, so it has to be indicated somehow ). In shell, it indicates the substitution of variable name by its value. In PHP...I draw a blank. It really seems like an "I wanted my language…

It differentiates variables from global constant things (constants, class names, function names, ...) for which the scoping is different. So you can have $strlen = strlen(...);

Off the top of my head, I struggle to come up with situations where you'd need an $ to distinguish class names or function names syntactically. Hell, in Lisp I can do (let ((length (length seq-1))) ... (length seq-2) ... ) just fine and it still works as expected, so no special characters necessary either.

Plus, to have different scoping rules was considered a good idea? Weird scoping issues were why I gave up on Ruby fifteen years ago; perhaps it was a good idea that I got never that far with PHP. But I'm intrigued now; what exactly are the scoping differences in question?

Re: PHP 8: Before and After

#196

Post by tambourine_man »

TheHemric wrote: post #112

I don't really understand why in 2020 there's still this kind of blind hatred against this language. It often comes from horrible bad memories from previous versions or old frameworks. Objectively, compared to other languages i've been working with it is more than OK. Despite it's lack of "style" it is easy to understand, host, tests, diagnose and it is powerfull for web applications. I've been working on a SaaS API…

I think it’s popularity has been soaring lately, actually.

It looked like a dead language in the 5.X days, then there was a resurgence with 7.

Re: PHP 8: Before and After

#197

Post by SergeAx »

asmosoinio wrote: post #181
SergeAx wrote: post #179

Please remember that PHP is more or less the only truly free (as freedom) community driven language suitable for both prototyping/pet projects and enterprise grade web software development. TypeScript and C# are Microsoft, Go is Google, Java is Oracle. Python is not suitable for complex multi-layered systems, Rust is too young and let's see where it will go without Mozilla. Ruby? IMO Ruby is in sunset phase, no new a…

> Python is not suitable for complex multi-layered systems For example what?

It is too loose typed and it's implementation of interfaces is too relaxed to use complex software engineering patterns and methodologies like DDD and SOLID.

Re: PHP 8: Before and After

#198

Post by fetbaffe »

jhgb wrote: post #178
dcabrejas wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't found any good arguments against PHP in the comments here, just pure hate. Let's name a few of the arguments people are making: 1. Its variables start with $ and that is ugly: I mean, come on, I won't even entertain this bigotry. 2. It used to be better before: This is just pure nonesense, before OOP PHP wasn't good to create any big and well-structured application, it is ironic because most of the bad opin…

> 1. Its variables start with $ and that is ugly: At the very least it seems nonsensical and cargo-cultish: As a non PHP-er, what is the actual purpose of $? In Perl, it indicates variable context (for better or worse, there's more than one, so it has to be indicated somehow ). In shell, it indicates the substitution of variable name by its value. In PHP...I draw a blank. It really seems like an "I wanted my language…

$ was taken from Perl

https://stackoverflow.com/a/3073818

but because early PHP was more simplistic than Perl it only has $.

Powershell also uses $ for variables.

Regardless of etymology of the $ sign and the usefulness of it, personally I like it because it makes it easier for me when I'm reading code, especially if you are scanning fast, to differentiate variables from symbols. Yes, you can get that with your editor too, but for me it is easier to associate the $ sign with a variable rather than a specific color, sometimes you don't have coloring available like when in command line going thru diffs, cat, nano etc.

Re: PHP 8: Before and After

#199

Post by danlugo92 »

codegeek wrote: post #142
systemvoltage wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than anything, I find the language $ugly. Is that fair? No. Am I being unreasonable. Yes. Do I love PHP? Gross. I just have to live with it and go past the ugly syntax. It’s like an unhappy marriage. It’s just fine.

But that's just like your opinion man (quoting the Big Lebowski). I like seeing the $ sign. Does that mean I am not a good developer ?

> Does that mean I am not a good developer ?

He never implied anything remotely similar.

Re: PHP 8: Before and After

#200

Post by wccrawford »

codeulike wrote: post #141
codegeek wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"he answered that 100-200 request per second is more than enough for most use cases" Exactly this. If you already know PHP and can produce results (mostly CRUD apps) and it doesn't need millions of rps, why do we need to use another language because they are so much better ? So much better at what ? It is like saying "I have a hammer, so everything looks like a nail to me". Not every web app has to be written in Lua/…

Reminds me of "PHP Hammer" I can’t even say what’s wrong with PHP, because— okay. Imagine you have uh, a toolbox. A set of tools. Looks okay, standard stuff in there. You pull out a screwdriver, and you see it’s one of those weird tri-headed things. Okay, well, that’s not very useful to you, but you guess it comes in handy sometimes. You pull out the hammer, but to your dismay, it has the claw part on both sides. Sti…

I think a better analogy would be that the PHP carpenters have standard old tools that people have used forever, and they work just fine. Normal hammer with wooden handles, normal planes, etc etc.

But there are modern carpenters that have hammers that are 100% metal and never break and actually improve your hammering power. The new electric hand planes work a lot faster, though you do have to be more careful because they can get out of hand quicker. etc etc.

In the end, they both build houses. The old-school carpenters might take longer, and they might have to know more techniques, but they get there in the end.

On the other hand, the modern carpenters sometimes go a littler overboard with their tools and have problems that old-school carpenters don't have, especially with their tools randomly stopping working in the middle of a job. It might not be often, but it happens.

To add to that, the old-school carpenters can actually use a lot of the new tools, too. They fit into the workflow and can be adapted to their old tools. It's just that they primarily stick with their old tools because they're used to them.

It's kind of interesting how much the world of woodworking and software development overlaps in that way.

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